It is very near the one year anniversary of my getting back to the pencils after a few decades' hiatus. Of course, my subject is trilobites as I live and breathe them! I've noted a great deal of progress in my technique in the last year, and since I'm in between fossil collecting trips, this short post hopefully underlines the point. Like night and day. Of course, the one on the left was a fifteen minute quick sketch, and the one I completed today took about fifteen hours. I've learned a lot in the last year, and set up a number of tough challenges in my pursuit to create photo-realistic illustrations. This will make illustration #33 out of my planned 50 before I scan, print, and bind them in a book. Part of the reason I gave up drawing so long ago was because I had stagnated. Life without the prospect of meeting challenges and to be in a constant state of becoming seems empty to me -- and that is something that follows me from drawing, to preparation, to just about all things I do. And just a tiny update to round out this blog post. A Fossil Forum friend was very kind in sending me a partial Thaleops from the Stewartville Member of the Galena Formation (Southeast Minnesota) for preparation. Here was how she found it in the field: And this was after a few hours of prep: I've been working on a few other pieces as of late, most of which are not yet complete (I swap between multiple projects). I still have a few Gravicalymene in my queue, a faded Ceraurus, lots of Penn Dixie rollers, and the list goes on. But for now, something I did manage to complete after about four hours of some sticky/hard matrix between the segments and some crush/crack issues. Before and after of this Flexicalymene senaria. None too shabby. One of the most challenging aspects of preparing any Flexi is getting the matrix out from those deep glabellar furrows (the nodular areas on the cephalon at top). Also, negotiation around the sometimes delicate eyes and anterior cephalic spathe, but in this case the crush damage to the cephalon meant work there to reveal more of an anterior brim would not reveal more than more matrix. That being said, the spathe is there. Not a bad representative of the species, either, being about 3.5 cm long.
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Kane Faucher
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February 2024
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